Shopify Wins For Online Stores. If Selling Is The Core Of Your Business, Its Checkout, 16,000+ Apps, And Sales Channels Give You Far More Room To Grow.
Squarespace Wins For Design-Led Sites. If You're A Creative, Service Business, Or Brand With A Small Shop On The Side, It Gives You Beautiful Templates And Simple Pricing In One Place.
Based on published specs and independent reviews, not a single synthetic score.
Shopify vs Squarespace looks like an easy call until you start comparing real numbers. One is a store platform that grew up around checkout and apps. The other is a website builder that added selling tools on top. Both let you list unlimited products, and both can look great. So what actually separates them?
The answer shows up in pricing, fees, and how much room you’ll need to grow. This guide walks through each of those, plus design, apps, and support, so you can pick one and get back to building your business.
Here’s the short version before the details.
| Shopify | Squarespace | |
|---|---|---|
| Best for | Stores where selling is the core | Design-led sites with a shop on the side |
| Entry plan (paid yearly) | $29/month | $19/month |
| Sales fee on entry plan | None with Shopify Payments | 2% on Basic |
| Add-ons | 16,000+ apps | Limited third-party extensions |
| Support | 24/7 live chat | Email and live chat, no phone |
| Free trial | 3 days, then a $1 promo | 14 days |
If you sell a lot of products and want room to scale, Shopify usually fits better. If your site is mostly about looks and content, Squarespace is hard to beat.
The real difference between these two comes down to where each one starts. Shopify starts with the store. Its admin is built around products, orders, and checkout, and everything else, like blog pages, sits around that core. Every plan includes unlimited products, discount codes, gift cards, abandoned checkout recovery, and the ability to sell on social media and marketplaces. Squarespace starts with the website.
Its drag-and-drop editor and polished templates are the headline, and selling tools are included alongside pages, portfolios, scheduling, and memberships. That’s why the Shopify vs Squarespace question rarely has a universal answer. A photographer selling a few prints and booking sessions will feel right at home on Squarespace. A brand with hundreds of products, several sales channels, and a real marketing stack will probably outgrow it and feel at home on Shopify. Neither is wrong. They’re simply built for different jobs, so the most useful question isn’t which one is better but which one matches what you’re actually trying to build.
Pricing is where most people start, so let’s lay it out. These are US prices as of October 2026, and both companies change them from time to time.
| Plan level | Shopify (yearly) | Squarespace (yearly) |
|---|---|---|
| Entry | Basic, $29/mo | Basic, $19/mo |
| Mid | Grow, $79/mo | Core, $29/mo |
| Upper | Advanced, $299/mo | Plus, $49/mo |
| Top | Plus, from $2,300/mo | Advanced, $99/mo |
On the price tag alone, Squarespace wins at every level. But the sticker isn’t the whole story. Squarespace Basic adds a 2% transaction fee on every sale, and that fee disappears from Core upward. Shopify charges no platform fee when you use Shopify Payments, though it adds 0.6% to 2% if you use another payment provider. Card rates are almost identical, starting at 2.9% plus 30 cents on both entry plans.
Here’s a quick example. A store with 40 orders of $50 a month pays roughly $99 on Shopify Basic. On Squarespace Core it’s also about $99, while Squarespace Basic climbs to around $129 because of the 2% fee. So for a small store, the gap shrinks fast once you pick the right Squarespace plan.
If looks are your top priority, Squarespace has the edge. Its templates are clean, modern, and built with designers in mind, and the editor makes it easy to get a good-looking page live without much fuss. Shopify’s themes are solid and focused on selling, with a mix of free and paid options, but they tend to give you less design freedom out of the box.
Ease of use depends on what you’re doing. Squarespace is simpler if you’re building a content-heavy site. Shopify can feel busier at first because it packs in more store tools, but those tools make daily selling smoother once you learn where things live. Both have a learning curve, and neither is hard for a beginner willing to spend a weekend with it.
When the focus is selling, this is where Shopify pulls ahead. Its App Store lists more than 16,000 apps for shipping, marketing, subscriptions, reviews, and more, so you can usually add what you need without custom work. Squarespace offers a smaller set of third-party extensions, and the company doesn’t support them beyond connecting and disconnecting.
That said, Squarespace isn’t weak at selling. It includes abandoned cart recovery, built-in memberships and digital products, and product syncing with Facebook and Instagram. If you sell courses or digital downloads, check the digital products fee, which runs from 7% on Basic down to 0% on Advanced, and compare it with the app you’d need on Shopify. For physical products and larger catalogs, though, Shopify’s checkout, sales channels, and app options give you far more room to grow.
Shopify offers 24/7 live chat on its main plans, with phone support reserved for the Plus plan. Squarespace says it supports customers around the clock by email and live chat, but it doesn’t offer phone support at all, and it won’t help with custom code or third-party services.
On trials, Squarespace gives you 14 days to test. Shopify offers a short 3-day trial, followed by a promotional rate of $1 a month for the first few months on most plans. That promo can change, so check the current offer before you sign up.
Moving later isn’t a trap, either. Shopify publishes a migration guide for Squarespace stores, and you can bring products over with a CSV file. Squarespace also documents how to link a Shopify store to a Squarespace site, which means you can test one platform without rebuilding everything.
Picking a platform isn’t only about month one. Think about where your store will be in two years. On Shopify, costs rise with apps, themes, and the plan you grow into, but each addition gives you something concrete, like better shipping, email marketing, or reviews. On Squarespace, your costs stay flatter and easier to predict, yet you may hit the ceiling on integrations sooner than you expect.
A good rule for the Shopify vs Squarespace decision is to list the five tools your store can’t live without. If most of them exist as Shopify apps, that’s a strong sign. If your list is short and mostly about showing off your work, Squarespace will likely cover everything for less.
Keep the Shopify or Squarespace decision simple, and remember that Squarespace vs Shopify is really a question about your goals:
For most online stores, Shopify is the stronger choice because of its checkout, huge app library, and sales channels. Squarespace works well for smaller shops, creatives, and service businesses that care more about design and want everything in one place.
At the entry level, yes. Squarespace Basic costs $19 a month paid yearly, against $29 for Shopify Basic. But Squarespace Basic adds a 2% sales fee, so for a store that sells regularly, Squarespace Core is often the fairer comparison and lands at a similar monthly cost.
On its current plans, Squarespace charges a 2% commerce transaction fee on Basic and 0% on Core, Plus, and Advanced. Digital products carry a separate fee that drops from 7% to 0% as you move up. Payment processing rates come on top of these fees.
Yes. Shopify provides a guide for importing products from a Squarespace store using a CSV file. Customers and order history can be moved too, although some data may not transfer perfectly, so keep your old site live until the new one is ready.
The Shopify vs Squarespace choice isn’t about which platform is better overall. It’s about which one fits your business. Shopify gives serious sellers more tools and room to grow. Squarespace gives design-minded brands a beautiful, simple home with selling built in. Use the free trials, price your own orders, and let your real numbers decide.
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